Wasp nest spotted

[Chris Luck]

Honey buzzards are resorting to Bumble bee nests....this was this morning.

[/IMG]

[/IMG]​

Workers all wandering around lost.

Chris

 

[cjhart2]

wasp nest spotted

...in fact I've hardly seen a wasp or hornet for the last month or so which really isn't good.

Chris

Still plenty down below you in Charente Chris , our friends the Asians are more prominent than the ordinary Hornet , Wasps are definitely less than last year , as we had 4 nests on the land by this time last year . Looks like the winter knocked the nests out and they are struggling to recover in this strange weather we are having .

Wild life seems to be behaving differently this year , mind you after it rained on 25 continous days in April i started to behave differently !


Doug and Chris

 

[Teemore]

Saw little or no evidence of wasps on the cotoneastor in our garden this year: normally it is crawling with them. This year there were only bumbles and hoverflies foraging on it. I saw a fair number of queen wasps early on and then nothing.
I was checking a recently hived swarm on Monday and a queen wasp dropped right in between the frames.... couldn't see what happened to her but there are enough bees in the colony and a small entrance so they should be OK.

 

[oliver90owner]

Looks like the winter knocked the nests out

Not true. Waspsansd hornets (and bumble bees) are eusocial insects. Nests are all abandoned in the autumn. Hibernated mated queens found new nests in the spring.

Some queens may have perished in the winter, but not so many, unless flooded, or extremely cold periods when the earth becomes frozen to a good depth. The poor/erratic spring (wasps were out of hibernation too early and then the weather closed in, and their new nests would be spoiled/destroyed).

Hope that helps you understand the life cycle of the wasps a bit better.

 

[cjhart2]

wasps ans hornets

Looks like the winter knocked the nests out



Some queens may have perished in the winter, but not so many, unless flooded, or extremely cold periods when the earth becomes frozen to a good depth. The poor/erratic spring (wasps were out of hibernation too early and then the weather closed in, and their new nests would be spoiled/destroyed).

Hope that helps you understand the life cycle of the wasps a bit better.

Thanks for that . Remember it was -18 degrees for 2 weeks here in Charente and 2 weeks below -6 either side of that . So probably the wasps did not survive till spring . The other thing is , i still have an Asian Hornets nest in the same tree they were in during the Autumn . Is this odd behaviour or are the Asian hornets different to the normal hornet when it comes to winter . ?

Doug and Christine

 

[oliver90owner]

My main point was that they care not what happens to the old nest, wasps have long abandoned them by the winter.

The queens are very good at resisting cold and with the long warm autumn would have good rerves for a relatively short winter spell, finding suitable refuge, but it is the very early spring-like weather that really did for them this year. I noticed plenty of queens around in March but the weather here, since then, has likely sorted them, I am sure.

 

[Chris Luck]

The other thing is , i still have an Asian Hornets nest in the same tree they were in during the Autumn . Is this odd behaviour or are the Asian hornets different to the normal hornet when it comes to winter . ?

Asian Hornets are just the same as other members of "the wasp family".

Are you sure it's active Doug? It would be more than unusual if it was being reused. Remarkably their nests do tend to hang in the trees for years sometimes before disintegrating.

Chris